what is your potential now I don’t worry
it’s not going to be a talk about how to
find your inner self and how to reach
your full potential
quite the contrary in fact my talk
starts back in 2013 as I was traveling
through Asia together with my study mate
Florian one of the highlights of the
trip certainly was Vietnam as in Vietnam
we spontaneously decided to continue our
trip on motorbikes from there onwards
the two of us being office guys and
total pen pushers with zero knowledge
about motorbikes or mechanics we not
only had to buy two motorbikes but also
to fake licenses as one does certain
done we started on our shaky bikes on an
early morning in Ho Chi Minh City and we
drove into the traffic of Vietnam where
21 people died every day so this was
much to delight of our mothers at home
soon after however we left the busy city
roads and we started to explore the back
country of Vietnam the high mountain
passes and the beautiful valleys
unfortunately more often than not our
bikes would break down as they were
cheap copies from China either under the
heavy rain or any other defect that
urged us to stop at the local mechanic
and ask for his help fixing our bikes
however being in the back country of
Vietnam nobody speaks English or Spanish
if you’re lucky enough you find one or
two words of French like from the call
you know ISM that are understood
forget about telephone or internet
reception and forget about your
translator app understand the local
dialect or vice versa what works much
better than words however our drawings
drawings symbols icons of what you need
of what you need for yourself what you
need to know or what you need for your
bike so we started drawing and we
started drawing symbols and icons for
what we needed to know or what spare
part we needed to have for our motorbike
and we soon realized that we kept using
the same icons day after day and one
evening at the campfire together with
some rice wine the idea was born let’s
just put all necessary icons for
others on a t-shirt so that they can
speak to everybody everywhere we put
that idea to rest however for two years
as we were both busy studying and
traveling and what one does only in 2016
we came together again and we finally
created that product we created an
online shop called icon speak dot world
because now I can speak to the world
soon after we were published by an
Australian block and what happened after
its of course is history in the spring
of 2016 we were captured by a viral
sensation and we were at the hype of all
news and social media we went from half
an order through a week to six seven
eight orders per minute we were
generating customers for more than 80
countries generating thousands of
backlinks from all over the world from
news companies and radio stations and we
were giving multiple interviews per day
to the likes of CNN or National
Geographic all this within a matter of
weeks and with zero marketing spending
at one point PayPal was shutting down
our payment account because their fraud
detection system said that our revenue
development was a fraud however we were
no fraud
we were just exploding and we had to
prove that by putting together cash flow
statements in a night shift and sending
them back to people now why did that all
work out so well nowadays people are
using I can speak to speak to everybody
everywhere even to aliens I think mainly
for four main reasons number one the
idea is very simple you point to your
shirt and you get what you need
second its global icons is not a
language that is verbal its visual so it
has no boundaries third this is still
kind of genius even is it is something
as simple as a t-shirt right it’s a
product that creates this aha
effect and this reaction of why did not
I come up with this
adversely it’s fun right design legend
Donald Norman once said don’t make
something unless it is both necessary
and useful if it is necessary and useful
don’t hesitate to make it beautiful I as
a design amateur I would like to add to
this don’t hesitate to make it fun if a
product is fun and causes people to
laugh when they use it the first time in
interaction with a stranger that
certainly helps with a positive user
experience that’s why our toilet icon is
not a man in the woman standing next to
each other it’s somebody actually
conducting business simply because it’s
more fun and you can trust me that this
is the icon most used among them all now
you might think that smoothness is quite
impressive what the guys achieved in
such a short time and quite frankly I
hope you do and you might even think
that this is like a well-executed
planning strategy but I’m not here to
tell you a success story and what you
just saw not much of this is the result
of a plan or well-executed strategy no
we just did it before starting I can
speak we of course shared the idea with
many family friends and fools and
everybody would just shake their head at
it and say things like well would you
start another t-shirt thing there are as
many t-shirts out there as there are
grains of sand on earth or quite frankly
that this we have zero potential but for
us those comments were not really
relevant because we never thought about
potentials instead of thinking about
potentials we thought about risk
minimization we knew that we could set
up the business with very little risk
involved the whole setup cost for this
was about 300 to 400 Swiss francs for
each of us with that money we mostly
engaged in testing of textiles and
designs 300 to 400 Swiss francs even as
a student that is no risk and if
something has no risk it takes no
courage to execute it so what’s your
excuse for not doing it hence for us it
was all about trying an idea with
minimal risk to try something in which
nobody really believed
having ideas in which nobody really
believes nothing strange to me
since I was little I was always full of
ideas and as I grew up with a
down-to-earth engineer as my older
brother I was quick to learn that many
of my ideas were kind of silly like
wheel chair I once tried to build out of
a used pair of rollerskates but I was
also quick to learn it even if 99% of
all night years are silly I would just
have to have 100 ideas per day to have
one good idea
every single day and with that one good
idea per day instead of focusing on its
potential focus on having a go at it
with smart risk minimization being an
entrepreneur and as a startup company
you always have to show potentials
permanently and quite frankly you always
lie because you best guess into the blue
intern area with so many unknown
variables that you just cannot know what
is your potential but if you can try
something but almost no risk involved
why would you care about this potential
just do it if you can try something that
has no risk the worst thing that can
happen is that you learned something on
the way so let me get back to my
introductory question what is your
potential I don’t care and neither
should you
all you should care about is purpose and
having enough ideas per day thank you very much
it’s not going to be a talk about how to
find your inner self and how to reach
your full potential
quite the contrary in fact my talk
starts back in 2013 as I was traveling
through Asia together with my study mate
Florian one of the highlights of the
trip certainly was Vietnam as in Vietnam
we spontaneously decided to continue our
trip on motorbikes from there onwards
the two of us being office guys and
total pen pushers with zero knowledge
about motorbikes or mechanics we not
only had to buy two motorbikes but also
to fake licenses as one does certain
done we started on our shaky bikes on an
early morning in Ho Chi Minh City and we
drove into the traffic of Vietnam where
21 people died every day so this was
much to delight of our mothers at home
soon after however we left the busy city
roads and we started to explore the back
country of Vietnam the high mountain
passes and the beautiful valleys
unfortunately more often than not our
bikes would break down as they were
cheap copies from China either under the
heavy rain or any other defect that
urged us to stop at the local mechanic
and ask for his help fixing our bikes
however being in the back country of
Vietnam nobody speaks English or Spanish
if you’re lucky enough you find one or
two words of French like from the call
you know ISM that are understood
forget about telephone or internet
reception and forget about your
translator app understand the local
dialect or vice versa what works much
better than words however our drawings
drawings symbols icons of what you need
of what you need for yourself what you
need to know or what you need for your
bike so we started drawing and we
started drawing symbols and icons for
what we needed to know or what spare
part we needed to have for our motorbike
and we soon realized that we kept using
the same icons day after day and one
evening at the campfire together with
some rice wine the idea was born let’s
just put all necessary icons for
others on a t-shirt so that they can
speak to everybody everywhere we put
that idea to rest however for two years
as we were both busy studying and
traveling and what one does only in 2016
we came together again and we finally
created that product we created an
online shop called icon speak dot world
because now I can speak to the world
soon after we were published by an
Australian block and what happened after
its of course is history in the spring
of 2016 we were captured by a viral
sensation and we were at the hype of all
news and social media we went from half
an order through a week to six seven
eight orders per minute we were
generating customers for more than 80
countries generating thousands of
backlinks from all over the world from
news companies and radio stations and we
were giving multiple interviews per day
to the likes of CNN or National
Geographic all this within a matter of
weeks and with zero marketing spending
at one point PayPal was shutting down
our payment account because their fraud
detection system said that our revenue
development was a fraud however we were
no fraud
we were just exploding and we had to
prove that by putting together cash flow
statements in a night shift and sending
them back to people now why did that all
work out so well nowadays people are
using I can speak to speak to everybody
everywhere even to aliens I think mainly
for four main reasons number one the
idea is very simple you point to your
shirt and you get what you need
second its global icons is not a
language that is verbal its visual so it
has no boundaries third this is still
kind of genius even is it is something
as simple as a t-shirt right it’s a
product that creates this aha
effect and this reaction of why did not
I come up with this
adversely it’s fun right design legend
Donald Norman once said don’t make
something unless it is both necessary
and useful if it is necessary and useful
don’t hesitate to make it beautiful I as
a design amateur I would like to add to
this don’t hesitate to make it fun if a
product is fun and causes people to
laugh when they use it the first time in
interaction with a stranger that
certainly helps with a positive user
experience that’s why our toilet icon is
not a man in the woman standing next to
each other it’s somebody actually
conducting business simply because it’s
more fun and you can trust me that this
is the icon most used among them all now
you might think that smoothness is quite
impressive what the guys achieved in
such a short time and quite frankly I
hope you do and you might even think
that this is like a well-executed
planning strategy but I’m not here to
tell you a success story and what you
just saw not much of this is the result
of a plan or well-executed strategy no
we just did it before starting I can
speak we of course shared the idea with
many family friends and fools and
everybody would just shake their head at
it and say things like well would you
start another t-shirt thing there are as
many t-shirts out there as there are
grains of sand on earth or quite frankly
that this we have zero potential but for
us those comments were not really
relevant because we never thought about
potentials instead of thinking about
potentials we thought about risk
minimization we knew that we could set
up the business with very little risk
involved the whole setup cost for this
was about 300 to 400 Swiss francs for
each of us with that money we mostly
engaged in testing of textiles and
designs 300 to 400 Swiss francs even as
a student that is no risk and if
something has no risk it takes no
courage to execute it so what’s your
excuse for not doing it hence for us it
was all about trying an idea with
minimal risk to try something in which
nobody really believed
having ideas in which nobody really
believes nothing strange to me
since I was little I was always full of
ideas and as I grew up with a
down-to-earth engineer as my older
brother I was quick to learn that many
of my ideas were kind of silly like
wheel chair I once tried to build out of
a used pair of rollerskates but I was
also quick to learn it even if 99% of
all night years are silly I would just
have to have 100 ideas per day to have
one good idea
every single day and with that one good
idea per day instead of focusing on its
potential focus on having a go at it
with smart risk minimization being an
entrepreneur and as a startup company
you always have to show potentials
permanently and quite frankly you always
lie because you best guess into the blue
intern area with so many unknown
variables that you just cannot know what
is your potential but if you can try
something but almost no risk involved
why would you care about this potential
just do it if you can try something that
has no risk the worst thing that can
happen is that you learned something on
the way so let me get back to my
introductory question what is your
potential I don’t care and neither
should you
all you should care about is purpose and
having enough ideas per day thank you very much
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